What are increasing global temperatures doing to your airways? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Climate change and increasing temperatures are already taking a toll on your health, research by David Edwards, a respiratory health expert at Johns Hopkins, has shown. 

Edwards: Airway mucosa is drying out, like the earth's top soil with warming temperatures, and it's provoking inflammation and a cascade of consequences that are driving an increased incidence of chronic respiratory disease. It's very concerning. It really wasn't until the last decade that atmospheric climate scientists discovered that relative humidity on the planet has not been changing over the last century even though temperatures have been rising and that's the problem. As temperatures rise evaporation rate increases at an accelerating rate.            :33

Edwards says just like leaves on plants, water evaporates from our respiratory membranes, making mucus thicker and more difficult to move out of the system, keeping toxins and infectious organisms in contact longer, leading to more infections. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.